Zidane ‘sees 2014 in this Madrid’

Zinedine Zidane sees echoes of the Decima-winning Real Madrid team of 2014 in his side as they prepare for Manchester City.

The Coach told his pre-match Press conference that Los Blancos are ready to be champions, and rated Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema at 100% fitness.

“I see the team focused, as in 2014. But we know it’s not easy. We can only think about [Tuesday’s] game,” AS quotes Zidane as saying.

“The idea is that Cristiano and Benzema play tomorrow. We’ll see after the last training session. They’re perfect and I think they’re 100%.

“Our idea is to all be together, because some play more than others. They’re also important. I’ll talk to the four players left out of the squad. That’s the difficulty of being the Coach.

“The important thing is to keep a clean sheet. That’s the idea, even more in a semi-final. Hopefully we’re focused.

“City are a good team and if you give them space, they’ll hurt you. They also have players between the lines. We’ll try to avoid that without the ball and cause them trouble with it.

“It’s important to defend and attack. We always want to do things in attack, but also to defend in complicated games as against Wolfsburg, where we went wrong after conceding. We’ll suffer, but we have our offensive weapons.”

Tags Zinedine Zidane
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